


A Love Song with Teeth (Conquering Vertigo in Three Acts)

by ShowMeAHero



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Bickering, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Flirting, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:04:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: Dex moves in with Nurse at the beginning of their junior year, and Nurse essentially ignores him.Dex learns more about Nursey, and their friendship is a stable, growing thing, living and breathing under Dex's ribs.Dex falls in love with Derek, and the foundations of his life are shaken to their core, and he's never been happier or more unsettled.





	A Love Song with Teeth (Conquering Vertigo in Three Acts)

**Author's Note:**

> A couple Christmases ago (I don't even remember what year this was), I gave out coupons for free stories. Cheyenne just redeemed hers, asked for nurseydex, and gave a list of demands. I hope this satisfies the hunger within her.
> 
> Title was mostly made up by me, but I got the "conquering vertigo" part from "[You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EwBNm1Uhs0)" by Zoey Van Goey.
> 
> Warnings are in the end notes.

When Dex first moves in, Nurse pretty much ignores him. It’s a hard ignore, too; paying him no mind when he brings his boxes up, turning to face the wall while Dex unpacks, eventually leaving when Dex starting to set up at one of the desks to start on the work he needs to have done for the first day of classes. He does that, essentially, for half a month. Hockey starts up almost right away, though, and they need to pay attention to each other if they want any chance of succeeding and not getting dragged by the rest of the team for fucking up.

“Hey, Poindexter,” Nurse calls, at their first practice of the year. Dex turns to glare at him just as he says, “Heads up,” and shoots the puck his way. Dex saves it and sends it flying into Chowder’s waiting palm. Nurse comes over to clap him on the back. “Nice save.”

“Fuck off, Nurse,” Dex snaps. Nurse just shrugs and skates off.

It goes like that for a while. It becomes their neutral setting of companionship, where Dex does his work and goes to his job and Nurse basically leaves him the hell alone when they aren’t on the ice. It seems like a step back from their increasing friendliness from the previous semester, but, whatever. As long as he passes his classes, Dex figures, and keeps getting hours at his job, and nothing bad happens on the ice, things will be just fine. He doesn’t need Nurse up his ass all the time to pull that off.

Of course, that assessment comes before midterms do, and midterms always kick Dex’s ass. It could have something to do with his study technique, which is to take too many notes and then scatter them all over the floor and try not to cry, or the fact that he has four separate research papers due, but when midterms hit, Dex’s control over himself and his grip on reality slips a hell of a lot. He gets back from work, thinking hard about the midterm exam he's sure he's going to fail on Tuesday, and barely makes it up to their bedroom.

Dex all but kicks the door in, arms full of books that he dumps on his desk. He slumps into his chair and pillows his face on his forearms, exhaling shakily. The room, he thinks, is silent and empty. He can hear, now that he has settled down, music playing very faintly. He lifts his head and turns, exhausted, still hunched. Nurse is sitting on the bottom bunk, headphones on, and he meets Dex’s eyes without turning away.

“Rough day?” Nurse asks, eventually. Dex turns away and shoves his face back into his arms. He stays silent; Nurse doesn’t talk again.

The next day, the same thing happens. Dex kicks the door in, falls into his chair. Nurse glances at him from his bed, listening to music, studying from his notebooks and textbooks in his bed. He doesn’t say anything this time, but he does watch Dex, just for a little bit, before turning back to his work.

On the third day, Dex collapses into his chair and rubs at his eyes, trying to stop them from tearing up, to stop his nose from prickling, his breath from hitching. He hears a quiet rustle behind him, but he doesn’t look. He starts studying, pen flying across his notebook pages as he copies down notes by hand, but he can feel himself getting angrier and angrier as he works. He’s aware of Nurse behind him, but he ignores him, mostly.

“Hey, Poindexter,” Nurse says, eventually. Dex doesn’t lift his head from his work. “Hey, man.”

“What.” Dex says flatly. Nurse is silent for another beat, so Dex turns slightly to look at him. He’s sitting on the bottom bunk still, but his headphones are in his hands. He hesitates, then offers the headphones in one smooth, fluid movement.

“I think you’d like this song,” he says, like Dex isn’t red-faced and fuming at his papers. The two of them stare at each other for a long, unbroken moment. Nurse shakes the headphones a little, and Dex, for some unknown reason, gets up and sits next to him on the bottom bunk. Nurse reaches over and settles the headphones over his ears.

“What is this?” Dex asks, as the song starts over again. Nurse taps at his phone, keeping his attention down.

“Kendrick Lamar,” he says, “and Rihanna.”

Dex listens to that song and, when the next song starts and Nurse doesn’t move, he doesn’t, either. He stays there and listens to the next song, and the next song, and the song after that. Eventually, he has to get back to his work, but Nurse plugs his phone into his speakers and they listen to Spotify while they both work on their papers.

Midterms pass, and things are finally broken between them, less iciness and ignoring of one another, more of a casual roommate situation. Their game on the ice gets better after that, too, Dex thinks. Their practices get better, they move more expertly, in conjunction with the new defensemen who have taken over from Ransom and Holster. Dex still misses them, and he’s getting used to their new teammates, but he still works best with Nurse. Nurse, it seems, works best with him in return, because he really ups his ante after that.

The end of October and the beginning of November, Dex and Nurse find a rhythm in their playing that makes Bitty, their new captain for his senior year, so proud that he beams at them every time they have even the slightest success. They’re playing Sacred Heart, and Nurse has already taken three checks and kept going, and Dex is fairly impressed, but he won’t say anything about it. He’s all focus when there’s a game going on, just like Nurse is, and he likes to think the two of them are professionals.

The thing is, though, that he thinks him and Nurse are slipping down the slope into friendship, so he _is_ feeling slightly impressed, and he _allows_ himself to feel slightly impressed. But only for a little while, because they’re behind on the scoreboard and Dex would never forgive himself if they lost just because he was thinking about Nurse’s playing abilities.

Nurse is skating hard, one of his best games all season, and it’s almost not enough. But then he turns and steals the puck and nails his shot, really _nails_ it, and it sails past Sacred Heart’s goalie and into the net, and Nurse turns, proud, as the other team skates away. He does this a second time, then a third, and that last goal sails in just as the final buzzer sounds, and they win the game. Nurse turns to Dex, grinning ferociously, all white teeth and sweat, and Dex is the first one to reach him.

“Killer hatty, Nurse,” Dex says, and Nurse flies forward, slamming in to Dex’s chest and throwing his arms around him. He knocks their helmets together, and suddenly Nurse’s face is _right there_ , and he’s tearing his gloves off and cheering, and Bitty skates over and starts bursting at the seams with how proud he is. Nurse spins away from him, but Dex is still a little struck by how impressed he is. And proud. Incredibly, weirdly proud.

That night, Dex is lying in the top bunk, hands behind his head, replaying the look on Nurse’s face over and over again.

“The Pond just froze over,” Dex says, out of nowhere. He wasn’t even ready to say it, but he had to flow with it now. “Maybe we should start practicing together. Smooth everything over.”

Nurse is quiet for a long time and, for a moment, Dex thinks he might be asleep. He’s about to roll over and shut his eyes himself when Nurse answers.

“We can start tomorrow morning,” Nurse replies, “if you’re okay with that. I know Bitty gets up early to practice at Faber. Maybe we can walk over with him and take the Pond.”

“Sounds good,” Dex says. “I’ll set my alarm.”

They start getting up at 5:00 together every few mornings, packing up their skates and their gear and walking with Bitty in the crisp air of early November. Bitty makes them all breakfast when they get back to the Haus, while Dex and Nurse shower, and then Bitty showers and takes a nap before his first class at eleven. Dex and Nurse usually end up sitting up after that, eating together in mostly-silence before Dex’s class at nine. The slope deepens, becomes more of a right angle, and their friendship is sliding right down it.

Those early morning practices, Dex thinks, are something he’ll remember for a long time after junior year has ended. There’s something about the unbroken stillness, the air frozen and wet, the hush of their skates across the ice. He thinks Nurse might be writing poetry about it, because he usually brings his notebook with him and scribbles in it while Dex skates lazy circles around the perimeter to wind down. There’s something, too, about Nurse’s hand on the page, about his face as he watches the sun rise and thinks about what he wants to say, about their budding friendship, that he will remember for a very long time.

Winter break comes swiftly, and Dex feels like he’s in the best shape of his life, academically and athletically. Their season has been going excellently so far, and he knows he’ll be back at the Haus in early January to start their games up again.

Still, though.

Still.

He misses Nurse.

He legitimately does, and it is a strange feeling to miss him that much. He missed his parents when he first moved to college, and his brother and sisters, and his dogs. He mildly misses his teammates when he’s at home. He misses his uncle when he leaves Maine every summer. He never expected to miss Nurse, of all people.

On Christmas Eve, Dex, twitchy from a lack of sleep the night before, when his room was far too quiet without the soft snores and quiet music of Nurse below him, takes a chance and sends a text. Just one. He has pride, still, and boundaries.

 **Will:** _hey. merry christmas eve. I hope your break is going well._

He lets the text sit, pocketing his phone just as his cousin’s daughter sprints full-speed at him and hurtles headfirst into his stomach. He lets the younger kids tackle him to the ground and plays around with them, roughhouses, wrestles, lets them pin him to the ground. By the time food is brought out and the kids abandon him, it has been an hour and a half - not that he’s been keeping track - and he has a reply from Nurse.

 **Derek Nurse:** _Merry Christmas Eve my dude._

There’s a Christmas tree emoji at the end. It’s a start, Dex figures. He considers replying, but his message doesn’t really lend itself to replies, so he just pockets his phone again.

It does turn out to be the start of something, because Nurse texts him the next morning.

 **Derek Nurse:** _hey_

That’s it.

Dex frowns down at his phone, fixated on the one text, over-thinking it until he’s run out of thoughts to over-think. In the end, he replies:

 **Will:** _hey_

And that’s it. Except that Nurse replies in a minute.

 **Derek Nurse:** _how’s Christmas at the republican national convention?_

And from there, they’re off to the races. They text every day after that, and it’s almost like they’re not separated. Nurse even Skypes him one night, until his moms call for him to come watch whatever movie they had put on, and Nurse gives him an apologetic shrug and signs off.

Dex spends a lot of time that night staring at the ceiling, thinking about their text messages, about their Skype call, about the concept of being friends with the person who he wants to strangle almost all the time. Twenty-three hours in a day are occupied with Dex fighting Nurse on every word that comes out of his mouth.

One hour, he decides, can be set aside for friendship.

He Skypes Nurse the night before he’s set to go back to the Haus, but they don’t talk about it when he gets back the next day. The first thing out of Nurse’s mouth is, actually:

“We should start practicing every day.” He tosses his suitcase on the bottom bunk and sprawls across his mattress. Early January is white outside their windows. “In the morning. Instead of only a couple of times a week.”

“You’re right,” Dex says, sitting at his desk, organizing his notes on his laptop. He turns in his chair. “We’re probably rusty from not practicing all break.”

“Bro, it was, like, a week,” Nurse says. He buries his face in his pillow. “We’re not rusty. I’m sure we can just do better if we practice more.”

“Do you want to go to Faber?” Dex asks. Nurse shakes his head against his pillowcase, ruffling his hair. It looks pretty messy. Dex turns back to his computer.

“Nah,” Nurse says. “I think we’re doing pretty good on the Pond. Plus, you know, it’s important to be in nature, Poindexter. You’re gonna get a hunch at your computer.”

“Fuck off,” Dex snaps, and Nurse chucks a pillow at him, and Dex yells at him, and the two of them are arguing in the nearly-empty Haus instantly. It’s hard to balance the perceptions of who Nurse is, and who Dex is to Nurse, and what they are to one another, and his head hurts when he goes to bed that night.

Jack starts coming up more and more to visit the Haus, which means endless chirping from everyone in the Haus, and Dex has the Sin Bin on his person at all times. It also means that Bitty is joined by Jack in the mornings, who encourages them to come to Faber and practice with him. This ends up translating to Jack making them run nightmare suicides because he is clearly not a morning person and he needs everyone to feel the pain. This means that they lose their visits to the Pond on the days Jack visits, but they make up for it by going to the dining hall for breakfast together, which quickly becomes an everyday occurrence. They also start meeting up to eat in the middle of the day for lunch, when they both have breaks between classes.

“Hey,” Nurse says one day, flipping through one of his poetry texts as they walk. “Do you think Jack wants us to die, or what?”

Dex, caught off guard, snorts laughing, and Nurse looks up at him, surprised. In his surprise, he trips, and Dex pivots hard to catch him, his heart in his throat, his hands tingling. The fear in Nurse’s eyes and the hands that slam into his and the head that rams into his nose all really drive the point home, though, that they are falling, even if it is in slow-motion, and Dex staggers back a step to steady them.

“I’m so sorry, man, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” Nurse says, and Dex waves him off, tipping his head forward because he can feel the nosebleed coming. “Shit,” Nurse says, and Dex nods.

“It’s fine,” Dex says, and spits blood onto the pavement. Nurse ushers him back to the Haus and stands near the doorway while Bitty fusses over him, making sure his nose isn’t broken, cleaning off the blood and bandaging the split near the bridge of his nose. Nurse hovers the entire time.

“Hey, Nursey,” Dex says. Nursey twitches to attention, his arms falling to his sides before he arranges them into a carefully casual position across his chest. “Why don’t you try using your feet to walk next time?”

“Have you been thinking that up this whole time?” Nursey asks. “That’s a shitty fucking joke, man. You had so much time to do better.”

The panic on Nursey’s face stays in Dex’s memory for a while, and he shoves down any feelings that come bubbling up as a result. Their friendship is growing with every day, and even though they still end up at each other’s throats constantly, it feels less hostile and more like a mutually agreed upon expression of sentiments. Blowing off steam. Expressing themselves in the only way they know how up to this point, which is to say, they express friendship by continuing to scream at each other.

That is not to say, though, that they are enemies anymore. They are something new now: something where Nursey threatens daily to divide their room down the middle like in a sitcom he watched once, where Dex actually does it once and Nursey screams at him and he screams right back. It is also something where Dex spends hours fixing Nursey’s computer because he’s freaking out about losing his work, where Nursey goes to Bitty and asks him to help bake cookies as a thank-you to Dex for aforementioned computer-fixing. They edit each other’s papers, they do their homework together when they’re home, they’ve starting hanging out with Chowder together instead of separately. It’s a weird day when Dex hasn’t seen Nursey all day.

Dex’s day, by the beginning of March, consists of: waking up, suicides in Faber with Nursey, Jack, Bitty, and sometimes Chowder, skating lazily on the Pond (with Nursey) to cool down afterwards, getting breakfast (with Nursey), walking to main campus (with Nursey), morning classes, lunch (with Nursey), his afternoon classes, a shift at work, meeting up (with Nursey) in the kitchen to drink coffee and work on homework, practice (with Nursey), possibly a game (with Nursey), possibly another shift at work, and then heading home (with Nursey) to go to bed (with Nursey) in his room (that he shares with Nursey). He also argues a lot (with Nursey) and talks a lot (with Nursey).

Long story short, he spends nearly his whole day with Nursey, at this point.

Chowder still doesn’t like that they fight, though. He calls the both of them out on it constantly, regardless of the situation. Like, when Dex suggests they go for a walk one night.

“Your white privilege is showing,” Nursey says from the sofa, because he loves to be antagonistic. Dex is seated right up along his side, working on a paper, and Chowder is sprawled on the floor.

“Your fuck off is showing,” Dex spits back.

“Oh, did you write that one down, Dex? What a horrible, wounding thing you’ve said.”

“Why don’t you just fuck off, Nursey? God forbid I try to do something nice-”

“Hey, Dex, _chill_.”

“Oh, fuck _off_ , Nursey-”

“Hey. Just chill-”

“Oh my _fucking_ god-”

“You two have to stop fighting!” Chowder exclaims. “It’s bad for my psyche.”

“We’re not fighting,” Dex and Nursey say simultaneously. Dex has to use all of his willpower not to turn to Nursey after they say it.

“We’re not,” Nursey continues. “We’re just-”

“-Expressing ourselves,” Dex finishes. He glances at Nursey this time, and Nursey smiles, just a small, slow thing, lazy. It’s nice.

“That’s all,” Dex says. Chowder frowns hard at them, assessing them, then lights up in the next moment, like a switch being flipped on.

“Okay!” Chowder responds, returning to his textbook. Nursey punches Dex on the arm the second he turns away, and Dex tackles Nursey over the arm of the couch onto the floor.

For all their bickering, Dex thinks he actually, genuinely cares about Nursey. He’s not exactly sure how to express it, because whenever he gets friendly or warm or soft feelings about Nursey, it’s like a steel trap is over his mouth and none of his thoughts can make it out, so he never says anything. Nursey seems to be just fine with that, because beyond the occasional “Nice one, Dex,” he doesn’t say anything, either. Nursey doesn’t tend to say too much, anyways, outside of his poetry and his arguments.

When it counts, though, Nursey comes through with something. Away games aren’t always easy for Dex, because he gets stressed out easily and so he has a lot to deal with at once, and plus he looks like he’s twelve at the best of times and he’s an easy target for anyone heckling them, regardless of what they’re being heckled for. Today, it’s just noise, by when he’s close to the boards, skating back and forth, waiting for an opportunity to act, he’s getting shouted at, sounds he just ignores. They start to get specific, though, and they’re starting to feel homophobic, and he wonders how much of it is about him and how much of it is about Bitty, who’s been all over the place in the past few months and who everybody knows the name and face of lately, but Dex tries to let it roll off his back. He can take it.

Nursey, apparently, disagrees.

“Hey,” Nursey shouts, skating to Dex’s side. He lifts his helmet a little so he can see better, looking up into the crowd. “Don’t do that.”

“Hey, we can say whatever the fuck we want,” one of the beefier guys shouts back. “What are you, his boyfriend? You gonna protect him during the fucking game?”

“Yeah,” Nursey says back, and Bitty’s calling a timeout, and everything seems to have slowed down significantly. “Maybe. So what if I was? Leave him alone.”

Nursey, for how laid back he is, can be very loud, very intimidating, and very angry. Right now, it doesn’t seem like much to the onlookers, but to Dex, who knows Nursey well, and to the guys in the stands, who seem on edge, it’s pretty fucked up. It’s a good look on him, Dex thinks, before squashing it right down into the soles of his feet. Nursey throws an arm around Dex’s shoulders and turns him away, shoving him back out onto the ice. Bitty skates up and starts talking a mile a minute, and Ford is shouting questions to him, but Dex just shakes them off and insists they keep playing. He keeps one eye on Nursey, and Nursey seems to be monitoring him in return.

They don’t talk about it afterwards, but the heckling dies down when Nursey skates up to his side at games now and starts shouting right back. Afterwards, he always goes back to his overly-relaxed, horribly-chill self, slouching off to spit somewhere and cause trouble, but, in that moment, he’s an enraged ball of spitfire swearing, and he didn’t tell them he wasn’t Dex’s boyfriend, and Dex has no idea what to do with these different-than-friendship feelings that are bubbling up now.

He also notices that Nursey has started to write a lot of poetry. Nursey is also Nursey, which means that he leaves a lot of shit all over the place and constantly forgets to clean up after himself, so Dex is straightening up their papers and just happens to read some poetry. Just a little bit. But it’s weirdly flowery, and nice, and also ambiguous. It was _right there_ , and he knows it’s an invasion of privacy, but now that he’s reading it he can’t seem to stop, because it’s vague but it also seems to be _about_ someone. Which is weird, because Nursey spends a lot of his time with Dex, and Dex thinks he would have noticed if Nursey was pining after someone. He knows Nursey is pan, so maybe it’s Ford, or Tango, or even someone more unattainable, like Jack, or Bitty, or Lardo, or… Anyone. There’s a lot of variables. The Samwell Men’s Hockey Team is populated with attractive and amazing people. Any of them would be lucky to be on the receiving end of Nursey’s ambiguous poetry.

Dex shuffles all the poetry into a neat pile and leaves it on Nursey’s bed where he usually leaves his stacks when he straightens up. He puts the feelings in the same place that he puts how he feels about Nursey intimidating hecklers, and Nursey watching him with his busted nose, and Nursey editing his papers, and Nursey getting breakfast with him, and Nursey being Nursey, fighting and writing and arguing and laughing. They all get shoved in the same drawer in his brain and slammed shut. And locked, for good measure. And he doesn’t say a damn word about it to anybody.

On the bus back from their last game - the championship game, and also a winning game - everything is complete chaos. Bitty scored a hatty, and Jack is sitting at the back of the bus with him, heaping praises on him while Chowder buzzes excitedly around him. Nursey is standing on his seat, half-drunk with excitement and pride, and he’s leaning back against the bus window, all casual slouches and crossed arms, but he’s still thrilled and excited and grinning. He’s shouting stupid-ass improvised poetry to anyone who will listen about their game, about their goals, about Chowder’s saves and Bitty’s hatty and Dex’s one goal, which he talks about at length and in detail.

They all get worn out eventually, because it’s a long drive and once Shitty, who tagged along with Ransom and Holster, insisted on taking the bus back, and is now currently sprawled in the back of the bus on the floor, falls asleep, things start to get quiet again. They’ll pick up again soon, Dex is sure, and he’s excited for it to happen again, but he’s also exhausted, because it’s been a hell of a season and a hell of a playoffs and a hell of a day, with a hell of a game on top of it all. Nursey seems to be feeling the same way, because he hops down and slides into his seat beside Dex. Chowder fell asleep near Bitty and Jack, so they’re basically left alone.

“I’m proud of you, man,” Nursey says, softly, in deference to the sleeping teammates that surround them. “You did a great job tonight. All season, really. Good work.”

“You, too,” Dex replies, because words get stuck inside his head a lot, and often do not make it out of his mouth. Nursey seems to take it for all that it is and settles in, folding his arms across his chest and yawning. He’s asleep in minutes, and he slumps hard to the side, his head resting on Dex’s shoulder. Suddenly, Dex is wide awake, his heart pounding, and the only words running through his head are _oh. oh no. oh jesus. oh fuck. oh jesus fuck oh no_ over and over again. Nursey sleeps peacefully through his entire freak-out, which concludes with a burning red face and a realization that the drawer that Dex keeps so carefully shut is full to bursting and will no longer stay closed.

They fall asleep on the floor in the living room that night, because none of them can bear to be apart, and Nursey ends up draped around Dex, and Dex buries his face in his arms and pretends it’s not happening, or that it’s Chowder, or Shitty, someone he doesn’t feel attracted to. Someone who isn’t Nursey. Someone who might actually return his feelings, maybe. He hiccups once and covers his head with his hands.

The Epikegster at the end of spring semester is a bang, and it’s Bitty’s last as a teammate and a student, and he can’t seem to stop crying, so Dex sticks close to his side. Farmer, Chowder, and Ford are on Nursey Patrol, because Dex would probably end up screaming at him, because his repressed feelings are in a shaken bottle and he’s ready to explode. A helpless, drunk, clingy Nursey will only pop the cap earlier, and he’s trying to last as long as possible.

Of course, though, Ford loses him, because Ford gets caught up talking to Mandy and Jenny, and then Farmer and Chowder are making out and Nursey gets away from them. Dex is leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, half-watching his phone, half-watching Jack try to comfort Bitty, who’s both smiling and crying as he tries to pull himself together. Nursey bowls into him from behind and nearly sends them both over the kitchen table, if not for Jack, who catches them and tips them to the side so they bounce off the wall.

“Hey, Dex,” Nursey says, way too close to Dex’s face, and Dex shoves him off.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going, fuckhead?” Dex snaps. “Where did Chowder and Farmer go?”

“They’re fucking,” Nursey says, and Bitty gasps, and Jack laughs. “And Ford’s talking to the ghosts.”

“To who?” Bitty asks. Jack laughs again, just once.

“That doesn’t mean you can just push me over whenever you want,” Dex says. He straightens out and adjusts his jacket. He managed not to spill too much tub juice, and he turns to look for a napkin, but Nursey reaches out and takes Dex’s face in his hand. Dex’s pulse immediately jumps from zero to sixty, and he can feel his face going redder and redder. Nursey just stares hard at him, eyes skimming his face. It seems like he might be staring at his freckles, dark green eyes skimming his features. His five o’clock shadow grew out with his playoff beard, and he hasn’t shaved it off yet, and it’s black against his skin, and Dex wonders what it feels like, exactly. He tries to banish the thought, but it doesn’t leave, and neither does Nursey.

“Hey,” Nursey says, softer now. “Hey, Dex.”

“What?” Dex asks, and Bitty is frowning at him over Nursey’s shoulder. Nursey just keeps staring. “Nursey, I think you had too much to drink, why don’t I take you up to bed and we’ll-”

His completely reasonable suggestion is cut off by Nursey slamming his face into Dex’s, lips eventually finding lips, and then everything narrows down to Nursey’s mouth on his, to his hands on Dex’s face, fingertips winding up into Dex’s hair. A sharp, high gasp behind them lets him know that Bitty is definitely still there, and probably also Jack by extension, and half of Dex wants to pull away and be embarrassed about that.

The other half wonders if this will be the only chance he’ll ever get, and he’s halfway gone on all the tub juice he’s had, and he reaches up to wind the fingers of his free hand into Nursey’s hair and kiss him back. He wonders if the poetry was about him. He wonders if Nursey’s lack of denial about being his boyfriend is something more. He wonders what will happen tomorrow.

He finds out that Nursey’s beard is coarse, but it’s soft, and it scratches Dex’s face in all the right ways. He wonders how red his face will be tomorrow.

Nursey breaks off to catch his breath, breathing hard like he just ran a marathon, and staring hard into Dex’s face, like he believes they might be communicating telepathically. Dex stares back, baffled, until Nursey lurches away and vomits into the sink. Bitty rushes to his side, and Dex needs a minute of staring at the wall. He’s still holding a cup of tub juice, but it feels weird now. He puts it down on the counter and makes eye contact with Jack, whose face remains fairly impassive for a moment before he smiles.

“I’m glad you’re finally getting along,” he comments, and Bitty reaches out to smack his chest, which just makes Jack laugh.

Between the three of them - and Chowder and Farmer and Ford, who have finally located Nursey, too little too late - they manage to get Nursey upstairs and into bed. Dex elects to stay up with him to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit or get out of the room to vomit in someone else’s room, or make any other kind of related mess. He sits in their desk chair and watches Nursey, fast asleep, curled around a wastepaper basket. He stares at his face, at his mouth, at his closed eyes, and his hands loosely curled into fists. He sleeps with his mouth open. He snores. He writes flowery poetry and he fights all the time and he never takes anything seriously.

Dex chest aches watching him sleep, and he falls asleep in the desk chair. When he wakes up, Nursey is still asleep, and Dex bends in half to put his head between his knees and take deep, steadying breaths. He pulls at the hair at the back of his head, and realizes it’s getting too long if he’s able to do that. He can hear Ransom and Holster talking in hushed, deep tones in the hallway, and wonders how long they’ll be staying.

In short, he thinks about everything but the look in Nursey’s eyes from the night before, of the feeling of Nursey’s lips on his. He reaches down, rubs at his face; he can still feel the scratch and burn from Nursey’s beard on his cheeks, his chin. He exhales shakily. There’s a knock at the door, and it creaks open.

“Hey,” a voice says, and he turns, and it’s Ransom. He holds up a Gatorade. “Bitty said Chowder fucked up Nursey Patrol. Figured you might need this.”

“Thanks,” Dex says. He takes the Gatorade and avoids Ransom’s eyes. Ransom crouches down next to him anyways.

“Hey,” Ransom says again. “It’s okay.”

Dex starts, then frowns, staring down at the bottle in his hands. He can hear Shitty talking in the hallway, but he ignores it, the sounds too low to pick individual words from.

“It’s going to be okay,” Ransom amends. “The two of you guys, you know, you’re friends. Bitty told me you’ve been friendlier this year. Chowder will tell anyone that listens how well you’ve been doing. I don’t think this will mess anything up.”

“It’s not going to be good,” Dex says quietly. Ransom stands and places a hand on Dex’s head, and Dex lets the feeling of it, the weight of it, ground him. He exhales, slowly.

“You don’t know that,” he says. There’s another knock, and Jack sticks his head in. Nursey is still asleep; he sleeps like a rock, and Dex is only half-grateful for it in that moment. Nursey would know what to say, but Nursey is also the reason this problem exists at all.

“Hey,” Jack says. His voice is as deep as it ever was, and Dex doesn’t know him that well, but he recognizes the look on Jack’s face, and the tone of his voice. Ransom, apparently, does, as well, because he pats Dex on the shoulder and leaves them alone. Nursey sleeps on, wrapped around one of his pillows, dead to the world. Jack shuts the door behind him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Dex offers, because it feels like Jack is waiting for him to talk. Jack comes to his side, picks up Nursey’s desk chair, and sets it down next to him. The room seems smaller with Jack in it.

“About what?” Jack asks, and Dex sets the bottle of Gatorade on his desk and drops his face into his hands.

“I don’t do things like this,” Dex tells him. “I don’t… I’m not…” He sighs, rubbing at his face. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees static. “I don’t know what he wants. Or what I want. Or what I…” Dex stops, drops his hand. Stares at the lines of his palms. Jack waits. Keeps waiting. “I can’t be gay. Or, I guess, I am gay, but I can’t be, with… home, and with my parents, and with my grandparents, I just don’t… I don’t know what would happen.”

“I didn’t, either,” Jack offers, when it’s clear to him that Dex isn’t going to keep talking. “I still don’t.”

“What do you do about it?” Dex asks. He makes eye contact for the first time since Jack stepped into the room.

“I lied,” Jack says. “I lied for a long time. Lies by omission, outright lies. It hurt the ones I care about.” He says it like Dex doesn’t know that he’s talking about Bitty. “I’m not saying you have to tell anyone. You don’t have to. I’m telling you that keeping it inside and lying about who you are is only going to hurt you. And the people you care about.” Jack glances away, to Nursey, still asleep, mouth open, hair a mess. He has lines from his pillowcase on his cheek. When Jack turns back to Dex, Dex finds it hard to look away.

“Thanks, Jack,” Dex says, quietly.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Jack tells him. “But ignoring who you are… That is.”

Dex huffs a laugh. “Nursey writes poetry. I think he’d like a line like that.”

“Feel free to tell it to him when he wakes up.” Jack fishes in his pocket and pulls out a scrap of paper with a string of numbers on it. “That’s my cell phone number.”

“We’re in the same group chat, Jack,” Dex reminds him. Jack laughs and rubs at the back of his neck.

“Well, it’s the sentiment.” Jack stands up. “I know how you feel. Let me know if you need to talk.”

Dex thinks, briefly, about how funny it is that neither of them really knows how to talk about their emotions, but Jack is still trying to reach out to him. Dex wonders if he’ll ever get to that point. He’s proud of Jack, fleetingly, for managing it.

“Oh, and Bittle said to tell you he’s ready to talk whenever you want,” Jack says, before he leaves. “If you want.”

“Thanks,” Dex says, and he wants to say more, but he can’t. Jack seems to understand, and he smiles before he leaves. He shuts the door a little too loudly, and Nursey startles up, banging his head on the underside of the top bunk, like he does almost every morning. He turns towards Dex, squinting.

“Hey,” Nursey says, and Dex, briefly, wants to scream. He doesn’t, though.

“Hey,” Dex says back. He gets up and hands Nursey the Gatorade. Nursey stares up at him, eyes still narrowed to slits, and Dex cracks the cap on the bottle with a sigh. He leaves Nursey alone to dig through their desk drawers for aspirin. He unearths a bottle and cracks that, too, for him, and pours a couple of pills into Nursey’s cupped palm.

“How are you feeling?” Dex asks. He considers sitting on the edge of Nursey’s bed, but goes back to the desk chair instead.

“I’ve been better,” Nursey says, “but I’ve been worse. You look horrible, bro.”

Dex laughs, once. It’s not funny. “Thanks.”

“You okay?” Nursey asks. He stares hard at Dex’s face and, before Dex can answer, his whole face clears, and he sucks in a breath. “Oh. Oh, man. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Dex says. His heart is pounding into his throat. He wants more, he realizes, with a sudden sharp stab of clarity. He wants Nursey to tell him it’s all okay and that he’s in love with him, maybe. Something good.

Nursey just keeps staring.

“It’s fine,” Dex repeats. Nursey turns and drinks half the Gatorade with his aspirin.

“I shouldn’t’ve done that,” Nursey tells him. “I won’t do it again.”

Not something good.

“Okay,” Dex says. He stands, and Nursey’s eyes follow him.

“Are you mad, man? We can talk about it.”

“I’m not mad,” Dex spits. Nursey raises an eyebrow. “I’m not.”

“You’re acting like you are. I get it if you are.”

“I’m. Not,” Dex says, through clenched teeth.

“Well-”

“Well _what_ , Nursey? What the fuck do you want me to say?” Dex explodes, and Nursey blinks at him.

“Bro-”

“Don’t _bro_ me,” Dex cuts him off. “Don’t _bro_ me, or _chill_ me, or _man_ me. Just… Just don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

“What do you want to hear?” Nursey asks. They’re both quiet for a beat. “I’m sorry.” Dex snorts. “Well, I am.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Dex says, quietly. There’s no voices outside the door anymore, but Dex isn’t stupid enough to think that means nobody is listening.

“Then what do you want?” Nursey asks again. Dex is stuck hovering between their beds and the door; he gives up and just turns, still standing.

“I want you to mean what you say,” Dex tells him. Nursey drags his legs to the ground; he’s in his boxers, Farmer having tugged his jeans off last night to afford him a more comfortable sleep. He’s still wearing his sweater, bright oranges and yellows against his skin. He shines in the morning light. His hair is a mess. His eyes are clear. He rolls his shoulders, stretches, and stands. He glances at the desk chairs side-by-side.

“Was someone else here?” Nursey asks. Dex looks at the chairs for a distraction.

“Jack says hi,” Dex tells him. “He said to tell you that making a mistake isn’t the end of the world, but ignoring who you are is.”

“Poetic,” Nursey says. Dex almost laughs.

“I told him you’d say that,” Dex replies. Nursey stares at him.

“Why did Jack say that?” Nursey asks, and Dex turns away from him.

“You know why Jack said that.” Dex eyes the door. It’s not that far. All his work is still in this room, though, and he doesn’t have a shift at work until later in the afternoon. He turns back to Nursey. “Why’d you do it?”

“What?”

“Why did you do it?” Dex repeats. Nursey keeps staring at him. Eventually, he blinks, and his stance softens, becomes more Nursey. He runs a hand through his hair and settles with his arms folded across his chest.

“I think it’s pretty obvious why I did it, dude,” Nursey says, “and I’m sorry about that. I get if it’s weird. I can find somewhere else to-”

“Wait,” Dex interrupts, and Nursey’s jaw clicks shut. They’re both still standing. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you being deliberately fucking obtuse? I’m telling you-”

“You’re not _telling_ me anythi-”

“I am _trying_ to tell you that I’m sorry and if this makes things weird then I’ll just go-”

“I don’t want you to go,” Dex exclaims, throwing his hands up. Nursey stops, frowns at him.

“Um.” Nursey rubs at the back of his neck. “Thanks.” He stares at Dex, and Dex stares back. “So. What now? We can just forget about it if you want. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Dex argues, absently. He can’t seem to focus fully; part of his attention is on deciphering Nursey’s words. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean by what?” Nursey asks. He’s frowning. Dex feels half-anger, half-confusion. It makes his skin hot.

“What do you want me to forget about?” Dex clarifies. Nursey’s eyebrows twitch a little, like he’s confused, and then knit together, a crease folding between them, across the bridge of his nose.

“That I kissed you,” Nursey says, which was obvious. “That I… You know, man.”

“I don’t know,” Dex says, sounding more choked than he’d have liked. “I don’t know.”

“That I like… you,” Nursey says, haltingly. “Which is not a big deal at all. It’s nothing. I just… I know you-”

“You don’t know anything,” Dex interrupts, and Nursey exhales hard.

“Asshole,” Nursey says, sitting down hard on the edge of his bed again.

“You don’t know _anything,_ ” Dex repeats, and Nursey glares up at him.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time, jackass,” Nursey spits. Dex takes a step forward, then another, and Nursey glances up at him, frowning. Dex leans down, crouches, then kneels, situating himself between Nursey’s knees. Nursey stares down at him; they’re the same height when they stand, but here, Dex is below him, looking up. Nursey’s lit up in the sunlight of the late morning. Dex thinks he understands what Nursey told him, and everything he hasn’t said, all in one dizzying rush.

“Why do you fight with me so much?” Dex asks, quiet.

“Because it’s easy,” Nursey answers. “And because you piss me off.”

Dex huffs a laugh and leans up, forwards, pushing their mouths together. Nursey tastes disgusting, like tub juice and morning breath, but his enthusiasm makes up for it once he unfreezes and bends down to meet Dex’s lips, weaving his fingers up and into Dex’s hair. He sighs, and pulls back, and Dex forces his eyes open to look at him. He waits, his head under the blade of the guillotine.

“Cool,” Nursey says, grinning, and Dex pulls him into a headlock.

Things are less horrifying after that, but it still feels like treading on thin ice. Their relationship very slowly, very casually starts an uphill climb from there. Nursey seems far more relaxed between the two of them, more willing to instigate touching. They don’t use a lot of words, but they’ve never really been good at that. Summer is approaching quickly, and Dex is a little antsy, because he wants to say _something_ but he’s not sure exactly what that something is.

Their dates are casual, like everything else has been so far. Casual. They go to Jerry’s, now and then, and spend time in the artificial aloneness it creates for them. In getting to know Nursey, Dex starts to realize how well he already knew Nursey. Their period of getting to know each other has already happened: it’s been their whole relationship up until this point. It leaves them in limbo, of not know where they stand and wanting to be standing further ahead than they are.

The last day of the semester is tense in their room. Everyone else is moving out - Dex can hear Beyoncé playing from Bitty’s room, and Chowder is running to each room periodically, checking to make sure nobody’s left before he could say goodbye - but Nursey is lounging on his bed. It’s only been a couple of weeks since the end-of-semester Epikegster, and Nursey’s moms came down a couple of days before and took up everything that couldn’t fit in his two suitcases. Those two suitcases are next to the door now, waiting for him to take them on the train with him when he goes home to New York. Dex’s dad and his uncle are on their way down to pick him up, and Dex is fitting the last of his books into the empty spaces in his boxes while Nursey listens to music. Neither of them is speaking, but Dex needs something before he leaves.

“Hey,” Dex says, leaning over and shutting the door. He probably has two minutes before Chowder passes by and starts banging frantically on the door, demanding to know if they’ve left without saying goodbye to him. Nursey pauses his music and sits up.

“What’s up?” he asks. He leans casually backwards on one arm, but his spine is straight and his face is lined with concern. His one free hand curls loosely into a fist, then stretches back out again. Dex rubs at the back of his neck.

“Um,” he starts, eloquently. Nursey watches him, focus zeroed in, razor-sharp attention never leaving his face. “Uhh,” he tries again. “What are we doing?”

“Moving out,” Nursey says, probably being purposefully stupid. He scratches at one eyebrow. Dex thinks he might get his eyebrows done, but he’s never asked.

“You know what I mean,” Dex says, and he sits down next to Nursey on the bed. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I get if this was just a little thing, but… if it is… I mean, Bitty offered me his dibs. If I wanted. So I wouldn’t kill you, he said.” That was what he said, but he looked sad when he said it. He’s already turned Bitty down, but he’ll talk to Chowder or something if Nursey actually takes him up on the offer. He doesn’t mind sharing the room with Nursey that much.

“It’s not,” Nursey replies. “Just a little thing, I mean.”

Dex wipes his palms on the thighs of his jeans and sits up straight. Nursey does the same beside him. He twists his baseball cap around so it’s on backwards, and Nursey’s face comes into full view.

“We can keep dating,” Nursey offers.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?” Dex blurts out, and immediately drops his face into his hands. Nursey dips his head down, and Dex lifts his head to glance at him.

“Whatever,” Nursey says, but he’s grinning. Dex shoves at him.

“No, _not_ whatever,” Dex snaps, but he’s smiling, too. “Please, Nursey-”

“Yeah,” Nursey says, and he’s smiling. “Boyfriends. Yes. That’d be good with me, bro.”

“Oh, my fucking _Lord_ -” Dex starts to say, but Nursey leans in and cuts him off, kissing him slow, sweet, in a soft, lazy way. Dex can feel him smiling, and he smiles back, letting himself be led into what quickly turns into making out, Dex pressing Nursey on his back into the mattress, kissing down to his neck, down to his chest, through the soft material of his v-neck. Chowder comes barreling through the door just before they take any clothes off, though, and he screams, a high-pitched and unsexy thing, and Dex hauls him out by his shirt collar.

That summer is almost like every summer Dex spent before it. It is like every other summer, because he spends it in Maine, on his uncle’s boat, catching lobster. It is also unlike every other summer, because Nursey texts him constantly, Skypes him every night that he can. He’s taken mostly to sending emojis that he feels represents what he wants to say, and Dex often sends back paragraphs because that’s just how he texts, but it balances out. Nursey also texts him poems he’s written, most of which are about him, but some are about the city, about the nature around Samwell, about hockey, about himself. All of them are beautiful, and Dex saves them to his phone to read again and again, not that he’d ever tell anyone about it.

Nursey comes up to Maine more than once, driving one of his moms’ cars every weekend they get the chance. Texts are good, and Skype is great, but Dex truly realizes how not-enough they are when he sees Nursey pull up outside. His parents are so glad he’s found a friend who wants to spend time with him. It aches, pulling at Dex with every second he has to lie about who Nursey is.

It’s different, when Dex gets the opportunity, a couple of times, to drive to New York and visit Nursey. His moms are nice to him, and they know he’s dating their son, and they’re open, happy, smiling. They don’t hover, they leave Nursey to his business, so he and Dex get to spend a lot of time alone. Dex falls a little in love with New York that summer, with the heavy heat and the crowded streets and Nursey’s hand in his.

Summer has to end, eventually, and it’s for the best that it does, because he likes their Skype dates and their time on the ocean and walking through New York, but he also likes living with Nursey, and their time spent together, entire days that can be spent in the company of one another. Nursey moves back in before he does, and meets him at the door.

“Hey,” Nursey says, to Dex, and his father, and his uncle, and the brothers and sisters that could fit in the van to help carry his boxes. “My moms are fighting in there. If we just stack stuff up out here, I’ll help you move it all in when they leave.” He rolls his eyes, like it’s a burden, and looks up at Dex’s dad. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Nurse,” Dex’s father says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Women, right?”

“Right,” Nursey says, and Dex hides his face. They carry everything up from the van and stack it in the hallway, they say their goodbyes, and Nursey opens their door.

“My moms left hours ago,” he tells him, and swings the door open all the way. Their bunk bed is gone; in its place is a queen-size bed, nicely made up. Nursey looks more nervous than Dex has ever seen him, which is to say he looks less nervous than any normal person might on a daily basis. “Is this okay?”

Dex drops the bag he’s holding by the door and touches one of the bedposts. Nursey hovers near him, then abandons him, halfway caught between anxiety and his relaxed persona. In the end, he sits on the edge of the bed and waits.

“I sold the bunk bed,” he continues. “I asked Lardo first. She was the one who got it for this place, and she said she didn’t even spend that much on it. And I used the money to get this.” He pats at the mattress, then looks up at Dex. Dex slams the door shut behind him and pushes Nursey back on the bed; he laughs, shoving Dex’s jacket off his arms, and pulls him close.

The house is a lot different without Bitty in it. Derek picks up as much of the slack food-wise that he can, but nobody could cook or bake like Bitty could, and they spend more time at the dining hall than they used to. He tries to teach Dex, too, but apparently his engineering and technological know-how does not translate to recipes, surprisingly enough. Another difference with Bitty gone is that their fights don’t get broken up as quickly.

“Are you fucking kidding me? The wording on this law is _bullshit_ ,” Dex snaps, throwing the newspaper to the ground between them. Derek throws his hands in the air and collapses down onto the sofa.

“You don’t have a fuckin’ eye for detail, Will, because if you did, you’d realize that it’s not the _wording_ that matters, it’s the nuances and how it’s going to be interpreted-”

“The _interpretation_ is the problem, you fuckhead-”

“Stop fighting!” Chowder exclaims desperately, but he’s ignored. He was given the C this year, their senior year, but even that’s not enough to stop their near-constant bickering.

The thing is, though, they’ve evolved. If Dex compares who they were freshman year to who they are now, he barely recognizes them for how much they’ve changed. Their fights, even, have taken on a different cadence. They fight over nothing, everything, current event discussions, heated debates over dinner, hypotheticals that get out of hand, anything. But now, Dex realizes, there's a bickering edge, a teasing lilt to their arguments, almost flirtatious. Some of their fights still end in one or both of them screaming and storming off, but, more often every day, they end in making out or falling into bed together, fumbling at belts, Dex’s hot face pressed into their pillows while Derek holds him down with a hand on the back of his neck.

It’s gotten a lot better, Dex thinks.

Chowder still scolds them, the frogs even tell them to shut up sometimes, but Dex feels confused, because it feels so different to him, now. All the little, subtle differences, all the changes, and it feels more like foreplay than anything else now. And Derek holds his hand when they sit and read in the library, and he gives Dex the chocolate chips and blueberries out of his muffins, and he throws his arm around him and pulls him in close when they walk around campus.

It’s gotten _so_ much better.

Their fall semester, Dex thinks, will be remembered for how sweet it is, and by how fast it goes. Their practices start early in the morning, because Chowder is even more merciless than Bitty ever was, or Ransom and Holster before him, or Jack before them. Ollie and Wicks graduated with Bitty, and so Whiskey and Tango claimed their dibs and moved into the attic in their stead. They all trudge down the stairs when Chowder knocks on each door every morning, Tango usually asking (every single time) what everybody’s doing up. Whiskey normally smacks him for the question.

Hockey-wise, their season is really good. That fall is good for them, even if they’re missing Bitty like a missing limb. Their new players are great, and Chowder is an amazing captain. Chowder often tells Dex how proud he is, how Dex is the best player on their team, and Derek smiles at him, like he’s proud. He skates over after games and hugs him when he does well, and even when he doesn’t. Whenever they fuck up a joint, roll an ankle, pop a shoulder, get bruises, cuts, they help each other take care of them. They have an ice pack specially marked for them in the refrigerator downstairs, a fridge which Dex has had to rewire and fix multiple times this semester alone.

They help each other with homework, sprawled out on the downstairs couch together. Derek falls asleep a lot, head pillowed in Dex’s lap, and Dex just tracks his fingers through his hair and keeps studying. Dex jailbreaks Derek’s phone, as a gift.

“You can actually type on it,” Dex teases, tossing him the phone. Derek catches it and turns it on. “There’s a keyboard. With letters. Not just emojis.”

“Fuck off,” Derek replies instinctively. He holds up the phone. “Thanks, though.”

They have sides of the bed, and Derek leaves poems on Dex’s pillow when he knows he won’t be around to see Dex read them. Dex saves each of them, pages and pages held together in a binder, inside page protectors. Derek’s handwriting is horrible, but his verse is beautiful. Most of them are about him. Some are about his ass. All of them make Dex blush, and he organizes them in the binder by category.

They still sit next to each other on the bus to and from away games, every time. Derek always falls asleep first, and he falls asleep with his head on Dex’s shoulder. He’s heavy, his dead weight, and their fingers are always loosely entwined, and he snores, lightly, but it’s not all that bad. Not with the countryside flicking by the bus windows as they drive, the laughs and conversations of their roommates buzzing around them, Chowder giving them all pep talks regardless of whether they’re going to or from the game.

When they do get Faber to themselves, or when the Pond eventually freezes over and they can go back to it, it feels a little like the winter before, their building friendship blossomed and changed into a building relationship. It’s the crisp air and the dangling promise of an imminent next step. It’s Derek, skating circles around him before closing in and kissing him soundly, breath huffing from their noses in steamy smoke into the cool morning air. Derek always presses close, gloved hands closing around the sides of Dex’s face, and Dex could drown in those moments, when nothing needs to be said, no arguments need to be made, no work needs to be done. They can just exist, even if it’s just for the briefest of moments.

They hold hands on their way back to the Haus, bags of equipment over their shoulders, skates draped over their shoulders. Derek kisses his hand before heading off to shower, and Dex hesitates before joining him. Derek makes them both breakfast, and Chowder when he joins them. Dex eats eggs off Derek’s plate, and Derek eats bacon off Dex’s, and it’s the best kind of rhythm Dex has ever had in his life.

It’s nice.

It’s _so_ nice.

Winter break comes, because it has to, in a blur of finals and papers and the end of an internship, for Dex. He finishes his last exam, then lets Derek pull him into their bed and strip him down, kiss him breathless, slip his hand into Dex’s boxer briefs, and drive him into the mattress. His dad comes and picks him up after that, and Dex thinks about Derek the whole ride home. He texts him as soon as he’s back, about how much he misses him, about things he thinks or sees that he thinks Derek would like to know about, and Derek sends back emojis and jokes and _hey yeah chill_ every time.

With Christmas comes an acute feeling of loneliness, a hole at his side where he knows Derek is supposed to be. He has fun with his family, with his brothers and sisters, his cousins, his aunts and uncles, his dogs. But the whole time, there’s an unshakeable feeling of absence. He texts Derek in those moments where he’s aware of it, and Derek always texts back right away. They send each other a lot of selfies; Dex saves all of Derek’s. He misses him like he doesn’t remember missing anyone before.

To his surprise, but apparently not the surprise of his father, who lets Derek in, he gets a visit the day after Boxing Day. Derek stays for longer than just that day, with a story for Dex’s parents about his moms going on vacation. Derek’s moms Skype them that night and tell them that they got their time with Derek and that they hope Dex feels better with him there. Dex tears up, and Derek chirps him mercilessly for it.

Derek stays for the entire week, until it’s time to go back to Samwell and move back into the Haus for the rest of their season, and then the rest of the semester. Dex suddenly becomes acutely, horrifically aware that their time at Samwell is close to being over, that this is their very last semester before they have to go into the real world, as it were. Their last semester getting coffee together at Jerry’s. Their last semester spending early mornings on the Pond.

Their last semester living together.

Dex freaks out a lot about it, but internally. He doesn’t want it to leak out and taint what could be the last few months of their relationship. He bottles it up and shoves it into his dusty mental drawer, pretends it’s not there. It’s not so bad, when he lets himself forget.

Valentine’s Day and Derek’s birthday coincide, and Derek turns 22 when Dex takes him out with money he’s been saving for weeks, on a trip back to New York. He borrows Farmer’s car and drives them to Manhattan, takes them to a poetry reading and out to dinner, then Derek takes him out to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It’s been closed for hours, but they sneak in, flicking on the lights in the building they manage to get into. They’re lit up in the freezing-cold darkness of Valentine’s Day, the city lights on in the distance, and, for a blessedly long moment, they get to be alone.

“I love you,” Derek tells him, in the complete silence. They’re sitting on a stone bridge, their legs dangling over the water, leaves and moss and flowers drifting lazily along below them. He’s looking straight ahead, but his hand is tangled with Dex’s. Dex glances at the side of his face. He’s dressed up handsomely, pink shirt bright in the darkness. He’s long since untied his tie, and it dangles now around his neck. The buttons near the collar of his shirt are unfastened, revealing his throat and the top of his chest, and the tank top he has on underneath. His beard is growing thick, because he liked it after last year’s playoffs and now lets it grow out beyond his old five o’clock shadow. Everything about him makes Dex ache, and so he looks at him, studies him, and he won’t soon forget what he looks like in this exact moment.

Dex lets it hang in the silence for a long while, long enough that Derek’s hand clenches around his, then loosens, releasing him.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Derek says. “It’s cool. I just wanted you to know.”

“I love you, too,” Dex says. Derek turns to look at him, and Dex waits a beat before looking back. Derek is smiling, and Dex finds himself smiling in return. Derek leans in and kisses him, soft, slow. _He loves him,_ Dex thinks, thrilled. Everything else that isn’t this fact fades away in that moment, and he couldn’t be happier.

Of course, there is a system of checks and balances in this world, and Dex has been doing way too well to not balance it out. His semester’s going well, and their games are going well, and Derek is going well, so something had to get fucked up.

Unfortunately, it’s hockey that takes the bullet.

Dex is well-known in NCAA hockey circles for his speed-skating and his ability to knock a puck out of the way and to one of his own teammates without anyone even noticing he did it. Luckily, Derek is just as well-known for being his partner-in-crime, the one the shots usually go to, the one who defends Dex when he needs it. Derek always has his back.

Of course, until the one day he doesn’t.

They’re up against Cornell, and a couple of their players have had it out for Dex from the second they hit the ice. They’ve been checking him every chance they get, every time they’re out of view of the refs, and it’s _really_ starting to piss Dex off. For as much it pisses Dex off, though, it seems to be pissing Derek off tenfold, because he’s been skating angry circles around them for the past several minutes. One of the players zooms towards Dex, then swerves at the last moment, drawing Derek’s attention away from them.

The other player takes the opportunity to come flying at Dex, clearly with the intent of checking him into the boards.

Instead, Derek whirls at the last moment, tripping the player with the blade of his hockey stick, and the guy goes flying sideways, and the edge of his skate slices right through Dex’s padding, his uniform, his guards, right through to the skin, the fat, the muscle, and Dex hits the ice hard, his helmet flying off. He can see spots in his vision, and he’s not sure if it’s from his head hitting the ice or from the blood loss he must be experiencing. He tries to sit up, but the world spins, and he lets his head fall back down. Derek’s face swims into his vision, the world swirling around him.

“Will?” Derek demands, and he sounds faraway, foggy somehow. It’s all murky. Dex squints up at him. “Will? Can you hear me?”

Someone says something nearby, and Derek vanishes, spinning out of Dex’s vision, and Dex can hear him, distantly, screaming.

The medics appear in Dex’s vision then, and he tries to ask what happened to Derek, but his leg is starting to really hurt, now that the shock and adrenaline of the injury is starting to wear off. He turns onto his side and vomits onto the ice, and he’s not really sure what’s going on, but Chowder’s face is hovering over the medics now, asking him how he’s feeling, telling him that he’s calling his dad, all sorts of information that Dex is not in the right place to process. They cart him off to the locker room, then to an ambulance, and Chowder’s next to him the whole time, and Dex wonders, absently, where Derek is, and why he isn’t with him.

He stays awake the whole time, but a big part of him wishes he hadn’t, because it hurts like hell and they only get painkillers into him after he’s been stitched up and set up in a room to observe overnight. They tell him that the skate didn’t reach his artery, and no major blood vessels were touched. His bone wasn’t damaged, but his skin and muscle were, and he’s already on the road to recovery, they say. They let him look at the stitches when they change his bandages, and they’re telling him he didn’t lose enough blood to go into shock, and they’re explaining what he’s going to need to do to get better. His painkillers are mild, he’s told, because he has a concussion from hitting the ice, and Dex is testy about it but doesn’t say much to the doctors and nurses.

His dad comes in then, tells him how proud he is, how well Dex handled it. Tells him his mom can’t come down just then, but that her and everyone back home are thinking of him. Tells him how Dex’s teammates are waiting just outside for him, and what a good friend Derek is, standing up for him like that.

“What did Derek do?” Dex asks, and his father goes to the door and lets Derek in. Derek, Dex is surprised to see, has a black eye, medical tape over the bridge of his nose, and he looks terrified. He’s aware of Dex’s dad lingering in the corner, so he doesn’t touch Dex too much, doesn’t kiss him or take his hand, but Dex can tell that he wants to.

“How are you feeling?” Derek asks, and Dex exhales shakily, releasing tension he didn’t even know he’d been holding.

“I’m okay,” Dex tells him. “I’m tired.” He motions to Derek’s face. “What happened to you?”

“They attacked you on purpose,” Derek says. “It was just… I wasn’t going to let them get away with that.”

“He took them both down,” Dex’s dad adds proudly. His phone rings, and he looks down. “Oh, it’s your grandmother. Let me take this, hold on.”

Dex’s dad steps out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and Derek is over him in a moment. His hands are roaming over his head, down his sides, and he presses his lips hard to Dex’s forehead, exhaling sharply, slowly.

“I have never been more afraid in my life,” Derek tells him, and it feels like a part of them both is breaking open in that moment. Derek is almost unrecognizable - almost, because if it were anyone else looking at him, it would have been strange to see him so tense, so afraid, so concerned. But not Dex, who has seen Derek evolve over their careers at Samwell, and who recognizes now the phases of Derek’s emotions, and this is a breakthrough inside of him.

“I’m okay,” Dex promises him, and Derek leans over and shoves their mouths together, bruisingly hard. His breath hitches. “Thank you for beating them up for me.”

Derek laughs shakily. “Anything for you.”

And he means it.

For Dex, it’s the end of the season.

Derek is only suspended for a couple of games, and he’s back on the ice for the end of the season. They make it to playoffs, but not the championship, but Chowder is as proud of them as if they had just won the Stanley fucking Cup regardless. Dex sits in the stands at the games, crutches at his side, leg still bandaged. He gets his stitches out a week and a half after his injury, and starts his physical therapy to rebuild the muscle in his leg. He misses the rest of the season, but he gets to watch Derek live and in action, playing his heart out, some of his best plays ever. He’s insanely proud, and doesn’t know how to express it, so he spends a lot of time kissing Derek after games.

Once the season ends, Derek makes the casual suggestion that they get tattoos to commemorate their careers at Samwell. Neither of them intends to go further with hockey - Dex has already been offered a job at Tufts, working as a software application developer, and Derek has a job lined up as a social media coordinator at a historical site in the city - so it’s a nice way to neatly tie and seal up their time at Samwell. They ask Chowder to come and get one with them.

Each of the three of them gets a tattoo of their Samwell Men’s Hockey number. Chowder gets his on his ankle, Dex gets his on his ribs, and Derek gets his at the top of his spine, on the back of his neck. Chowder’s crisp 55 is red against the pale skin of his ankle, and he’s so happy to have been involved, and to have been their friend for years, and they stay up late talking to each other on the sofa in the living room before heading off to bed.

Derek’s 28 is far from his first tattoo, and from his last, but it’s one of Dex’s favorites. His own 24 heals quickly on his ribs, and Derek likes to trace the edges of it with his hands and his mouth when Dex has his shirt off. It’s a nice sentiment, but every time Dex sees it, it serves as another reminder that their time at Samwell is coming to a close, a fact that is solidified when the end-of-semester Epikegster rolls around.

Dex feels existential the whole night, a feeling only exacerbated by Shitty’s arrival, and the subsequent appearance of an absurd amount of tub juice. He takes as much of it as Shitty will give him and slowly, then very quickly, loses his grip on himself. Nursey Patrol is in full swing, but nobody thought to look out for Dex, and so Dex ends up straddling Derek’s lap halfway through the night, right on the sofa, making out with him in front of everybody. Derek’s just as sloppy as he is, and lets him kiss him breathless, senseless.

“I love you,” Dex says, and Derek echoes the sentiment. “Please don’t leave me.”

Derek pulls back and frowns at Dex. “What?”

“Nothing,” Dex says, and starts kissing him again. The tub juice wreaks havoc on both of them, and Derek seems to forget he said anything, and they drink and make out and owe a fortune to the Sin Bin by the end of the night.

Dex wakes up next to Derek the next morning, just like he does every morning, and has a splitting headache. Derek is already wide awake and staring right back at him.

“Hi,” Derek says, softly. Dex shuts his eyes, rubs at his forehead. When he opens his eyes again, Derek is holding out a couple of aspirin tablets and a bottle of Gatorade. The aspirin helps his headache and the ache in his leg that hasn’t gone away yet, and Derek waits until he’s fully awake, coherent, and able to think straight before he says anything else. “About last night-”

“Oh, no,” Dex groans, covering his face with his palms. “Did I do something stupid? I’m sorry.”

“No,” Derek says, “nothing stupid. I just… You asked me something.”

Dex freezes, frowns. “Um. I did?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, rolling onto his back. He stares at the ceiling, his hands knit behind his head. “You asked me not to leave you.”

Dex presses his hands harder into his face, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. He exhales sharply and takes a moment to gather his thoughts. It takes a lot to get the words composed, and then out of his mouth, but after a couple of minutes, he manages. Derek has been doing wonders for his communication skills, which is impressive when he started at absolute zero. “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t’ve sprung that on you.”

“No, it’s fine.” Derek turns to him, props himself up on his elbow, traces shapes on Dex’s bare chest. They feel like letters. Dex wonders what he’s spelling out. “Did I… Did I say something? That made you think I was leaving you?”

“No,” Dex says, then pauses. “Well. It’s not… You didn’t say anything. It’s just like…” He exhales sharply, goes quiet. He doesn’t say anything else.

“Let me know if you want to talk about it,” Derek says, because he knows better than to push Dex when he’s like this. Dex nods, and Derek waits another minute before getting out of bed to vomit and shower. Dex picks up Derek’s pillow and covers his face with it and pretends nothing is going wrong.

The last week of the semester is spent in full-blown panic mode, trying to stop himself from freaking out about finals, and essays, and graduation, and Derek, Derek, Derek, always hovering on the periphery of his thoughts. Dex doesn’t want to fuck up the end of his college career, or his future in the workforce, or his life with Derek. He doesn’t know how to pull it all off at once, and everything feels taut, tense, fearful.

He’s able to dress nicely for graduation, a full suit, the first pants he’s managed to put on since his injury. He likes that he can cover up his scar, but Derek traces the outline of where he knows it is through his dress pants and kisses his cheek.

Chowder makes a speech at graduation, and Dex sweats the whole time. He’s finally graduated, and he’s expected to start at Tufts in July, and he’s afraid to look for apartments because him and Derek haven’t talked about it and he knows they should have by now, and if he thinks too much about it he has a panic attack, so he settles for wiping his sweaty palms on his graduation robe and focusing on the warm, familiar cadence of Chowder’s voice as he talks.

Graduation flies by, and they have to move out the next day. Dex wakes up to Derek packing the last of his stuff into boxes, and he sits up and squints at him until he manages to put together what he’s doing.

“Hey,” Dex says, and Derek tapes a box shut.

“Hey,” Derek echoes. He doesn’t continue.

“Do you wanna…” Dex starts, and stops. Derek doesn’t finish it for him. “Do you wanna talk?”

“About what?” Derek asks. He doesn’t turn to look at him. He just keeps packing.

“About us,” Dex clarifies. Derek keeps packing. Books, clothes. Everything goes into the boxes. Dex watches him with a frown.

“What about us?”

“What do you want to do now?” Dex asks. “We’re… I mean. We have to move out today.”

“Whatever you want, man,” Derek replies. “I’m good with whatever.”

“Well, I mean.” Dex sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He’s let it grow out for a while now, and it’s got enough of a length for him to comb his fingers through. “It’s kind of, um. Serious. Right?”

“Yeah,” Derek replies. Keeps packing.

“What do you want to do?”

“Whatever.”

“Derek,” Dex says, starting to feel a little hot in the face. He knows his neck is burning, and probably his ears. “This is serious. I want to talk to you about this.”

“Maybe you should’ve talked about it before the last fucking day,” Derek snaps, and Dex rips the covers off.

“If you had a problem, why didn’t you fucking talk to me?” Dex explodes, weeks of tension and fear blowing out of him at once.

“Because I was giving you space like you wanted, you asshole!” Derek shoots back. “I’m trying not to fucking push you!”

“I’m _trying_ to talk to you now!” Dex shouts. “Is that not good enough?”

“No, of course it isn’t,” Derek snaps. “Why the fuck would it be good enough? You’ve had _months_ , Will.”

“Well, I-”

“Fuck off,” Derek mutters. Dex stares at him, then grabs his phone and his pants and storms out of the room. He’s down the stairs before he realizes they’re Derek’s pants, but he’s too far to go back, so he just tugs them on in the living room and keeps going right out the door, shirtless and in Derek’s dress pants from the day before. He makes it to the Pond before he realizes where he’s going, and he sits at the edge of the Pond and fumes, mostly-incoherent thoughts and things he should have said blurring through his head. He stares there for half an hour before he hears footsteps behind him.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he snaps, expecting Chowder, or maybe even Bitty, or Shitty, if he happened to hear him. There’s a quiet shuffle, and then whoever it is sits down next to him. It’s Derek. Dex exhales sharply and turns away.

“Hey,” Derek says. Dex doesn’t say anything. Derek reaches into the pocket of his jeans and hands him a crumpled-up piece of paper. It takes a long moment of stillness before Dex turns and takes the paper. He unfolds it and smoothes it out, and it’s a poem. He ignores Derek’s eyes and looks out over the Pond for a while before he looks down at the poem to read it. It’s afraid, and soft, and loving. Dex loves him for it, as much as he hates himself for letting this get out of hand.

“I’m sorry,” Derek says. “I overreacted.”

“I’m sorry,” Dex says back. “I let this go too long. I should have dealt with this earlier.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“The poem’s about you,” Derek tells him. Dex laughs, once.

“It better be, you asshole,” he says. Derek bumps shoulders with him, then reaches down and takes his hand.

“Fuck off,” Derek says, but there’s no heat behind it.

“You fuck off,” Dex says back.

“Well.” Derek starts, then stops. He takes a deep breath. “You know I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Dex assures him.

“Then quit fucking yelling at me,” Derek says, and Dex rests his head on Derek’s shoulder.

“Then be normal and actually respond to me,” Dex replies. Derek reaches up and strokes his fingers through Dex’s hair before wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Derek repeats.

“I’m sorry.”

They’re quiet.

“I’ve been afraid,” Dex confesses. “I don’t want to mess anything up, so I just… didn’t rock the boat, I guess. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You were never going to lose me,” Derek tells him. “Never. I promise. You gotta chill out, you overthink everything.”

“Not helpful,” Dex says. “But it’s how I’ve been feeling. I don’t know what to give up.”

“You don’t have to give up anything,” Derek tells him. “I’m a poet. I’ll find work regardless.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’d follow you anywhere, Will.”

“Boston’s not so far,” Dex says. Derek smiles.

“You’re right,” he says. “It’s not.”

“We can get an apartment together,” Dex says. “Rent’s awful in the city, but it’s not that bad split between the two of us.”

“I’ll pay my way,” Derek assures him. “I’ll work. I have hands, don’t I? You don’t have to give anything up.”

“Thank you,” Dex breathes, and Derek pulls him close, kisses the top of his head and buries his face in the hair, his nose pressing to the crown of Dex’s head. Dex looks out over the pond, at the warm morning sunlight over Samwell, and lets Derek’s weight ground him there, in that moment, where everything finally settles, clicking perfectly into place.

“I love you,” Derek reminds him. Dex shuffles closer, turning his head up to catch Derek’s lips in a kiss, and they both laugh at once.

“I love you,” Dex echoes. Derek kisses the crown of his head and pulls him in close again. After a long moment of holding each other, and a second long moment watching the Pond, Derek stands and offers Dex a hand. Dex looks out over the Pond for a few more seconds before he takes Derek’s hand and stands up, following him back to the Haus, hand in hand, side by side.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** vomiting, minor character injury, blood.
> 
> I have written, like, zero fanfiction lately because I actually wrote a book instead. It was a long road but I actually did it! It's about two young ladies who hunt aliens and fall in love. If you want to read it, shoot me a message!
> 
> You can follow me on Twitter at [@nicoIodeon](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon) or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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